For our American readers, the story so far. Our local police force has achieved some national notoriety for the excessive zeal with which they have been enforcing our lockdown rules. Thus they surrounded two women found walking together 5 miles from their homes. Further criminality was alleged in the form of a vacuum flask, hard evidence that they proposed to have a picnic. It was, therefore, with some trepidation that I embarked upon an expedition to deliver my glasses to the optician to have new lenses fitted. Because this constituted a real outing I had firstly to decide what to wear and whether I should wash the car. Then legal advice had to be sought as to whether this constituted necessary travel and whether our opticians was deemed to be local. The possibility that one is engaging in some sort of banditry adds a certain frisson to leaving the house.
Peering coyly out of our door I ascertained that there were no missile firing police drones over-head and that the neighbours weren’t watching. They might after all be police informers. There was also a suspicion that Deirdre might be an under-cover agent who 50 years ago was embedded in our household to await just such a circumstance as this. Should I change the car license plates, I wondered. A complicating issue about what constitutes local travel is added by the fact that Cadent are repairing a gas main and have closed off the top of our road. The closure is about 20-30 feet of road but requires a detour of about 6 miles to come out on the other side of the barrier.
This became significant Saturday evening when we decided to get a takeaway from the village. This was to celebrate its being a Saturday and the fac t that we still had our freedom despite having gone out to the bins which are several feet from the door. Normally I would have fetched the food in the car but due to the diversion I walked. Because of the pandemic I was wearing a mask, thick gloves and my glasses were steamed up, so in the dark I didn’t realise I was carrying the bag with the poppadom upside down. If it had been naan
bread I could have picked it up and brushed off the grit, but poppadoms are extremely brittle I discovered and unrecoverable.
The Titanic and the Iceberg came into being thousands of miles apart but were doomed to collide. Thomas Hardy considering tragic destiny, called it the Convergence of the Twain. Now we are living through unutterably terrible times I can only contemplate little manifestations of destiny – a gas repair job converging on a pandemic resulting in the sad loss of my poppadom.
Another casualty of these times is live TV which is in an increasingly sorry state since lockdown so that social distancing has badly curtailed the possibility of making new programmes. It really comes down to a choice of Greg Wallace doing something or Greg Wallace doing something else or Netflix. Before Christmas it was every conceivable permutation of cookery, with these ingredients, or those ingredients, for this occasion or that occasion, to fit this mood or perhaps that mood. Every taste, every delicacy was catered for except perhaps cannibalism, but I suspect that could be found on ITV 3 somewhere. Mary Berry best suited my style of gourmandising with her Comfort Eating, always something tasty, warm and meaty – and I’m not referring to Nigella. Mary also has the same sort of log burner as we have, I noted in the background, which I found very reassuring.
Since Christmas it’s all been about health and dieting, though the two don’t necessarily go together. This is the time of year of course when everyone traditionally joins the gym, attends a couple of times just to “ge: a swea: on” to quote Joe Wicks and then slips back into their onesies and cheerfully decomposes on the settee. This year we can all make resolutions to watch more programmes about health while spilling our Bombay Mix over the carpet. It was with this resolution in mind that I undertook to self-lobotomise by watching one such programme, my choice being dictated by a spare twenty minutes in my diary and the fact that Greg Wallace wasn’t presenting it. It was all about how to boost your immune system. It had the usual trestle table laden with broccoli of an unreal garish green colour, but what came as a new insight for us was that finishing your hot shower with 30 seconds of cold shower boosts your immunity. Yesterday I tried this with a slight false start as I turned the knob the wrong way and scalded myself, but after that I did this vigorous and refreshing penance and today I can report it worked. Twenty four hours later and I haven’t caught any diseases. I think the effect is permanent so I needn’t do it again.